


Gap Year

by mythomagicallydelicious



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual Stan Pines, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Tears for Stan Pines, little bit of a character study, minor mentions of dating, stan loves his family, stan x happiness?, stan's gap year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27702820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomagicallydelicious/pseuds/mythomagicallydelicious
Summary: On January 1st, 1995, Stan made a new resolution for the first time in fifteen years--this is the story of him following through on a "normal" life, for once.
Relationships: "Manly" Dan Corduroy & Stan Pines, Sherman "Shermie" Pines & Stan Pines, Stan Pines & Ford Pines
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Gap Year

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion and a bit different from "Stan's Calendar Year", an earlier fic I've written on this subject. This is the more detailed version I'd always imagined, but never quite put pen to paper. Some things are changed between the two fics, so I promise, it isn't a copycat.
> 
> -In November's section, there is an implication of "Stanford" having surgically removed his extra fingers, if that bothers you it's in paragraph 7 of that section. It is very brief.

On January 1st, 1995, Stan stopped working on the portal. He tied a piece of twine around Ford’s journal and set it up on the highest shelf he could reach without using a step ladder.

He spent New Years Day buying up the mega-discounted fireworks from all of the stands in and around town, even down the highway for about twenty miles in either direction. Sometimes he used the five-finger discount to add to his cart as well. He hauled them back to the shack and threw them in a closet, picking some of his favorites and heading out to the parking lot to set off a few that evening, knocking back a pitt cola and keeping a fire extinguisher close at hand.

He hoped the noise would scare off the gnomes for another few weeks, as they’d been getting a little bolder in trying to get into the shack lately, after hot food. As he watched the fireworks scatter and light up the sky, he built up his resolve that this year, he would live like a free man.

He ran tours as tourists booked them, and set up a sign in town about “new attractions” (old attractions he’d brought out of storage and added a pair of antlers to) and ran a tour for the townsfolk as they showed up in groups. It paid to keep the townsfolk interested and invested in coming back for more year round. It paid so well he thought he might take a week off and head to Vegas, soon.

For most of the month he took a moment to take a break, though. He started trying to go to bed by eleven each night. He tried not to fall asleep in front of the TV and give his back a rest. He spent most of his time not doing much, and it was strangely freeing.

When February rolled around, Stan took a shopping trip to the nearest actual city and walked around the local mall for about six hours. In and out of shops, didn’t even steal much of his total haul. He got a couple new additions to his closet, and the number of a pretty barista who said he liked Stan’s shoulder hair. He got a few essentials and a boatload of nonessentials, but interesting to think about or try, and took the trip home.

Stan spruced up the Shack, cleaning up any overt messes, taking a mop to the floors for once without a kid having to upchuck on it first. He made the place less cramped and disorderly, and really put it into any sort of order. Even if some of that order meant hiding stuff under his bed.

He cleaned himself up nice, shaved his perpetual five o’clock shadow, and put on some of the new digs he’d bought from the store and drove back out to the city, meeting the barista who was into his shoulder hair.

He was on a date. An honest to Moses _date_.

And it even turned out pretty well. They saw each other a few more times. He scored a bit. They broke it off but it was nice. Stan kept his number and the man kept his and every now and then if one or the other happened to be in the right place at the right time, they’d meet up again over coffee, at home.

In March Stan prepared for the many waves of spring breakers, family road trippers, and nearby bored college students.

(He offered a special discount for college students—if they could beat Mr. Mystery in an arm-wrestling match, they’re in free. If they lose, it’s double the price. Stan never lost, and he got to beat up a bunch of yuppy college punks for money. A win-win.)

Everybody and their brother had a different spring break than everyone else, and he spent the whole month swamped with sales and calling up new orders of merchandise, trying to keep enough stock to sellout with every wave of gullible tourists who came by.

March was windy, though, and blew his signs off their posts and billboards, trashing half of Oregon.

Stan spent way too much of April dripping wet, trying to fix those signs. He didn’t run half as many tours in April, exhausted as he was driving all over to re-affix his signs. Didn’t matter, though. Not much of a crowd in April.

He did, however, clear out a space in the back room he sometimes uses for party events, and began work on a playing card tower. The back half of April, after all those signs were squared away, he spent every moment not eating or asleep in the back room, building. After two straight weeks of careful maneuvering, wary of even the slightest brush against the tower that would destroy his work, as well as careful of every step he took to not step too heavy and watch it come down around him—as well as buying fifty additional decks of cards from in town—Stan created his masterpiece of a card house.

It was six feet tall—as high as he could go without getting a ladder—and spread across the space. It was a vast castle, with turrets and spires and even the card equivalent of a moat.

When it was finished he smiled, took a picture, and left. The next morning he knocked it down himself. He laughed and laughed and laughed until tears spilled from his cheeks, then laughed some more. He spent the last few nights that month sorting the cards back out to their own decks.

In May Stan mourned with the rest of the town about the double heart-attack deaths of Ma and Pa Duskerton. They closed up and chained off the shop. Stan felt a flicker of loss at their passing, remembering their faces of some of the first kind eyes he’d seen when he first got to town.

On June 1st, summer break had officially begun. In the spirit of the season, Stan closed up shop for the first summer in the last fifteen years. His most lucrative season, and he was closing the doors. He went out to the lake with the rest of the town, sitting on the shore and watching families and friends meet up and talk and laugh and go out on the water. He got into a conversation with the young new forest ranger that had taken up the station after the old ranger had retired. The kid had started out pretty guarded, and not that Stan was ever the pushy half to make conversation, but eventually they had a pretty good back and forth going.

Eventually the ranger had to get back to his job and Stan was alone again. He went to the lake most of that week, itching with the need to do something, but not sure what his options were. Until the town mayor looked a little too old to be heading out in a dinghy anymore, and Stan liberated the boat from the owner, looking out for the mayor’s best interests. Especially if those interests included not capsizing.

He painted the outside over and hastily scribbled a name on the side—proof enough in Gravity Falls, that something belonged to you, was if it had your name on it.

From then on, Stan collected fishing supplies and bait from the young ranger, and headed out on the water. Maybe it was a rowboat barely big enough to hold him and the fish cooler, but it was _his boat_. Stan looked out over the water and caught his reflection, and resolved to stop looking in mirrors if he could avoid it for the rest of the year, too.

On June 15th he stayed in, except for a quick trip to town, buying two cakes and a few big bottles of the strong stuff. He ate one of the cakes in one sitting, leaving the other, the one of his favorite flavor, growing up, alone. He started in on bottle two and would have kept plowing through them if his phone hadn’t gone off.

He answered, ready to blow off or blow up at whoever was on the line, but a voice he hadn’t heard in years caught him by the throat, choking off his drunk anger at the interruption.

His brother. His older—no, _oldest_ —brother. Wishing him a happy birthday. Asking if he had a moment to talk—if not no problem, you’re probably busy, you’ve been too busy for us for years—the good brother guilt trip being laid like a charm.

But Stan answered. And they talked. And Stan couldn’t remember too well the next morning, but there were empty bottles littered around the phone cord, the phone off the hook and making that annoying dial tone noise, and he thinks he may have cried that night.

He woke up with the nastiest hangover in years, and red, puffy eyes, and hazy memories of the night before. But he wasn’t a total idiot, and could put a few clues together.

His confusion was mostly cleared up the next week when his phone went off again, and he answered, and Shermie told him they’d agreed to call a couple times a month, from now on. To keep caught up. He shed a few lights on the drunk rambling Stan had done on his birthday, which also explained why the second cake had been smashed to crumbles and there’d been frosting in his bed sheets and over his hand that morning after as well.

The rest of June, Stan opened up shop and ran a few tours. Summer was a busy time, after all, and he’d hate to lose out on all that easy money.

In July, Stan set off some of those fireworks from New Year’s on the fourth, keeping the local police on their toes. He ran them all over town, trying to catch the troublemaker. He almost set half the forest on fire, but managed to put out the last batch of sparklers in time. He never got caught. He recorded the special on the news about his exploits and put it in his mementos box. It was good no to get too rusty on getaway skills.

He listened to country music for one day only, and absolutely refused to cry to that Marti-whatever-McBride song he heard on the radio. He did eat a ton of ice cream later that night, though, still thinking about it.

He spent some of his month killing time at the different bars downtown. The rough biker bar brought back a few too many memories from his old days, but sometimes it wasn’t half bad, rubbing elbows with other wannabes and badasses all mixed together. He got back some of his tolerance to the hard stuff as he spent more and more time downtown, forgetting everything for a few hours.

In August he congratulated his closest neighbor, Manly Dan, on his engagement. Dan and the soon-to-be Mrs. Corduroy were a match made in heaven, to Stan’s way of thinking. He told them both he’d always be up at the Shack if they needed him. Dan crushed him in a manly hug of thanks. His fiancée also hugged him, saying he could drop in for dinner once everything was settled. (He did).

Louise Foreman and Dan Corduroy had been dating for a couple of years at that point, and Stan almost couldn’t believe they went that long before Dan popped the question. But that did make the immediacy of their wedding make sense. They were set to be married a few scarce months after they announced the engagement. Those two loverjacks looked ready to have a cabin of their own. Stan offered a hand in getting ready for the wedding, despite meeting Louise’s many sisters and knowing they could probably get it handled just fine.

In September Stan took an official vacation. He booked himself on a cruise down the western seacoast, trailing down to Mexico and back again. Two weeks, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and an executive suite. He struck it “lucky” at bingo and walked away from the whole affair with some serious cash added to his pocket.

He hit on a few lovely passengers, solo cruise-goers looking for a peaceful vacation at the same time of year that the least amount of kids would be on a cruise. Struck out less than he expected, and left with a few experiences that were fun, sure, but were easily pushed out of his mind by the end of the trip.

In the evenings of the cruise he laid out on the deck and stared up at the stars, bright and clear as far from the cities and air pollution as they were, and imagined he was on another shore, on another boat, for a few moments.

(He used some of his bingo winnings to actually pay for a star chart but stuffed it into his duffle bag without unrolling it from the poster tube. He’d learn the names again later. For now he just wanted to stare up at the sky like ~~when they~~ —when he was a kid.)

In October, Stan went all out on decorating the Mystery Shack for Halloween. All month long, he kept adding decorations and _gotchas_ and anything that may spook a visitor. He went to the library and voluntarily checked out books for the first time that year, all about stage craft and the physical art of special effects. Stan special ordered way too many pieces and parts, maybe, but he had the most fun he’s had in years, that Halloween, trying to put together a series of effects to make the Shack into a haunted house.

Business was booming, on the days he opened the Mystery Shack to the outside world, letting his tricks play out in real time and taking mental notes to see what he needed to improve for the next run. By the 31st, he had the whole shebang planned out to a _T_. He scared the pants of trick or treaters—literally, in the case of one boy. Stan recognized him as the kid whose father ran the used car shop. Pal or Guy or—Bud? Something.

He held onto the library books even after he was done with them, not quite ready to let go of the fun he’d had as he’d used them, maybe the first time he could remember enjoying what a book had to say that didn’t directly make him money.

In November Stan piddled around by the phone for three hours, trying to convince himself to pick it up and make one simple call. When he finally bit the bullet and dialed, he nearly hung up again from pure nerves. The phone was half out of his hand when the voice on the other end answered, much younger than he was expecting. It hooked him enough to bring it back, ask a question.

Speak to his nephew for the first time in way too many years.

Sam sounded like he was doing good. About to get married to a nice girl he’d met at college a few years back. Was into computers, the nerd. Before he knew it, Stan had been listening and talking for two hours to the kid, before Sherman even came on the line. Got himself invited to the Pines’ residence, if he wasn’t too busy for family.

Stan gifted a crock pot to Dan and asked him to watch over the shack while he was out of town. For once he went the speed limit most of the way there, hands sweaty and stomach churning as he made his way down to Piedmont.

Shermie sometime over the years lost the need to keep calling him Stanford, and finally accepted the “new nickname” he’d asked to be called a few years after “losing Stanley.” Deceiving his family always left a sour, bitter feel in him, but it was so a part of him by now, that he didn’t even want to flinch when he was greeted by his brother and asked questions meant for Ford.

This was his year. He was going to be as much himself as he could. And he knew he wanted to be around family for one damn moment.

The kids were great. Set to get married next year, apparently going to wait a couple years on kids, they said. Small talk, family gossip, and everything that hadn’t been shared in years swirled around the table over the few days Stan was down there. Shermie didn’t say anything about the scars on Stan’s hands, the practical effect make-up job he’d spent a lot of time perfecting. He looked sad, but didn’t comment.

All in all, he left November with a promise of calling more, a full belly and a belt with a need to be loosened. And a warm feeling and a stupid, goopy smile that took at least one state’s of travel to shake off his face.

In December Stan didn’t even bother opening the Shack. He took care of some essential home repairs, some repainting, making sure the heater would be kicking strong all winter long. He caught up on the latest season of a show he’d started watching and binged the holiday movies on the public access channel for something to do.

He received a coupon in the mail from Greasy’s Diner for a free stack of pancakes, and a holiday card with a picture of Sam and Mellie, his bride-to-be. Dan gifted him a hand-built stool, promising more in years to come. He put it behind the register in the gift shop and promptly forgot about it.

On the 31st he pulled a book off the top shelf, undoing the twine around the binding that kept it closed. He held it in his lap, staring at the golden hand on its cover, letting tears go in free-fall above it as the television blared noise and Dick Clark narrating the seconds counting down to the new year.

Stan barely heard the roar of the crowd as the ball dropped, his own heart pounding so hard in his chest he felt it in his ears.

Confetti and noisemakers and spontaneous joy filled the screen as Stan allowed the dam he’d built in his mind to break, and apologies came spewing out from him, voice catching on sobs and the emotions he’d suppressed in order to have this one year for himself.

The book he gripped close to his chest as he spoke to his brother, apologizing for trying to act like he could forget about him, like he could even imagine living his life when it was stolen from the other—

He fell asleep with hiccupping cries accompanying his snores, exhausted and slumped in the old yellow chair.

-

On January 1st, 1996, Stan woke up early and prepared the Shack to be in tour-giving shape. He prepared to run them the rest of the month.

That night he took the elevator for the first time in a year, and, with new resolve, worked to bring his brother home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comment with something you think Stan should have done in his year off, too, because I love all of the ideas to be stirred around for the next fic, haha.


End file.
